As computer devices with touchscreens become increasingly commonplace, new ways of user-device-interaction are becoming possible including, for example, zooming and resizing objects with multi-touch gestures. New shapes or characters can also be input directly.
Typically, however, the range of possible control gestures is limited by a requirement to immediately decide what kind of action the user wants to take, and in most cases the system's behavior is determined by the specific area that a user touches and the general direction of the user's gesture. By contrast, conventional desktop computer systems typically include a pointing device that enables at least one alternative input mode (e.g., via a mouse right-click).